UNMC researchers have determined that a common virus that usually stays inactive throughout life may increase mortality for one-third of the normally healthy people who stay in intensive care units (ICU) more than five days.
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) causes opportunistic infections in people who have compromised immune systems and also can be harmful for people whose immune systems are not compromised.
The importance of CMV reactivation in critically ill, non-immunocompromised patients was demonstrated by the research, published in the August edition of Critical Care Medicine by Andre Kalil, M.D., associate professor of infectious diseases and director of the Transplant Infectious Diseases Program, and Diana Florescu, M.D., assistant professor of infectious diseases.
“This virus is reactivated when something affects or weakens our immune system, such as chemotherapy or organ transplantation,” Dr. Kalil said. “It also reactivates when a non-immunocompromised patient is admitted in ICU for more than five days, is very sick or has severe sepsis.”
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Andre Kalil, M.D. |
“Now that we identified patients who are at greater risk for CMV reactivation in the ICU, we can design a clinical trial to confirm our findings and potentially develop new treatment strategies,” he said.
CMV is a member of the herpes virus family and infects between 60 to 85 percent of the people in the United States by the time they are 40 years old.
Most healthy children and adults infected with CMV have no symptoms and may not even know that they have been infected. Others may develop a mild illness. Symptoms may include:
- Fever;
- Sore throat;
- Fatigue; and
- swollen glands.